DevLearn 2015: Getting Inside the Minds of Students

Michael WindelspechtOctober 15, 2015

Students don’t know what they don’t know. This one simple fact has been one of the biggest obstacles in the reform of any learning ecosystem. If we are going to truly change the education ecosystem, we have to be able to not only get inside the minds of our students, but also generate the data that allows us to make informed decisions on the types of learning resources and content that we need to build.

This fall I submitted a proposal for the DevLearn HyperDrive competition entitled “Getting Inside the Minds of Students” in which I explored how I am using data from the LearnSmart adaptive learning program to gain an insight into how the students are interacting with the content in the books I author. In addition, I explained how this is analysis is allowing me to generate microlearning resources that address specific knowledge deficiencies and its potential to ultimately allow for the construction of continuously updated content.

There were some truly great presenters at the event, and some great examples of innovative approaches to solve e-learning and corporate training problems. I was very pleased when our presentation was selected from the field as one of the finalists at the event.

About The Author

Michael is the lead author of the Mader/Windelspecht series of non-majors biology textbooks and a lead consultant to higher education publishers on the effective use of ed tech in the classroom. He founded Ricochet Creative Productions LLC and is the editor of Ricochet Science, a free web resource for science educators.